CEDIA Electronic Lifestyles EXPO

[AnthonyZ]

OK, just a quick sneak peak. I was onsite all day today and look out...

Wilson is setting up the big guns this year.
AMX has a HUGE presense.
Several demo rooms from various manufacturers.
Proficient Audio was showing off today with an odd but good sounding booth.
As expected, tons of IP.
Several "simulators" (golf, racing, etc)

Should be a great show. I'll post tomorrow with others...

 

[MikeB]

OK, just a quick sneak peak. I was onsite all day today and look out...

Wilson is setting up the big guns this year.
AMX has a HUGE presense.
Several demo rooms from various manufacturers.
Proficient Audio was showing off today with an odd but good sounding booth.
As expected, tons of IP.
Several "simulators" (golf, racing, etc)

Should be a great show. I'll post tomorrow with others...

Any updates?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Can someone take a look at the HS Touch at the HomeSeer booth?

 

[upstatemike]

I would like to hear from anybody who visits the HAI booth (223) and checks out the new 5.7 inch touch screens.

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

I would like to hear from anybody who visits the HAI booth (223) and checks out the new 5.7 inch touch screens.

Mike,

These have been out for a couple of months now. We have them in stock. I think they look very nice. Pricing is good on them too. They are cheaper than the 3.9" screens that do video.

 

[upstatemike]

I would like to hear from anybody who visits the HAI booth (223) and checks out the new 5.7 inch touch screens.

Mike,

These have been out for a couple of months now. We have them in stock. I think they look very nice. Pricing is good on them too. They are cheaper than the 3.9" screens that do video.

Any idea on the pricing for the ones coming out in November? (support ip cameras and built in ip intercom). Was hoping there would be a preview of these on display at CEDIA.

 

[AnthonyZ]

Any updates?

OK, sorry, I was out of town through the weekend.

Vantage had an amazing booth. Showed well and certainly got my attention. Their new TP's (wireless) are freakin' awesome.

Nuvo was showing the Grand Essentia. Super cool piece with awesome KP's. Also, VERY efficient in standby. They really pushed the environmental aspect of lower consumption (by a lot) over the competition. They also produced a white paper. I'll scan and post when I'm not so tired.

Elks new TP's are great. Maybe great enough to swing me from the HAI camp!

Totem Acoustic blew me away, as usual. I cannot even begin to describe how much I love their speakers. I've been a dealer for about a year now and Totem is easily the product I sell that I'm most passionate about. Easily...

Marantz paired with Snell for a fantastic demo despite the use of a POS TVIX server as source component.

Convergent Living showed well while pushing the custom aspect of their line. I supplied some Totem Rainmakers and a Storm sub to show off the integration with a Russound CAV66. Of course, they sounded great.

Lot's of servers and media content (a la IP) presense. Some good looking stuff from Xperinet. They have joined the BluRay camp and they also showed off a wall mount client. They should take off this year as K'Scape continues to piss off their own dealer base (I heard a lot on this). As a matter of fact, my understanding is that K'Scape's national director of sales jumped ship to join Xperinet.

Snap AV is looking (and sounding) good in the low $ camp.

AMX was huge but arrogant, as usual. Crestron played cool off to the side. Addagio line even had a "sub" booth.

Those were the highlights from my perspective.

 

[upstatemike]

Any updates?

OK, sorry, I was out of town through the weekend.


...Elks new TP's are great. Maybe great enough to swing me from the HAI camp!...

Are the new Elk TPs different hardware or just a different interface? Did HAI display the new screens with IP intercoms built in?

 

[lpott6]

Anthony, Nice review!

A few things I saw.
Centralite introduced JetStream. The system is Zigbee Pro and does not require repeaters to function. It uses either an IP or RS-232 bridge to communicate with other systems and for programming via a PC. The switches were very responsive and looked and felt good. The pricing is similar or a little higher that UPB and the best news is that Elk is on board to create a link module. Here is a link. It is targeted for a 4th QTR release.

Axonix was showing MeadiaMax. This is an expensive media solution, although 1/2 the price of Kalidescape, that is hard drive based and handles DVDs, music, photos and is the only one with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray capability. There is also capability to link to the net and download online music and video content to the library. Very cool system and available now. MediaMax

Russound had several new items. They showed an audio distribution piece that only needs cat5 to send a signal to any location. A "black box" then connects to a keypad and speakers. It includes an amp with 20w per channel and also passes RNet control info. They also showed a powerline iPod dock that can be placed anywhere and connect back to an RNet system thru the house wiring. There were more, but I can't remember them right now. These are due out in 2008.

 

[lpott6]

Any updates?

OK, sorry, I was out of town through the weekend.


...Elks new TP's are great. Maybe great enough to swing me from the HAI camp!...

Are the new Elk TPs different hardware or just a different interface? Did HAI display the new screens with IP intercoms built in?

I don't think there was anything we haven't seen except for a new version of RM that supports the Russound link and it was very nice. Able to control the RNet system very well.

 

[Spanky]

The most amazing item to me at the CEDIA show was the 3D Plasma Screen that did not require glasses to see the 3D image. Really amazing product!

 

[AnthonyZ]

Wow, I just know that I am a happy guy. I am so blessed to make a living in the industry, get to play with SUPER cool toys and have a wife who loves it almost as much as I do. Today we put in a second Totem Acoustic Storm sub in our own theater (with her blessing) and should have an Xperinet Polaris server in to replace the MCE (not exactly a POS but hardly compares to a dedicated media server) in about a week. On top of the fun coming out of the CEDIA show. My wife and I are already making arrangements for spring EHX in Orlando. What did I do to desreve all this?

 

[upstatemike]

... and should have an Xperinet Polaris server in to replace the MCE (not exactly a POS but hardly compares to a dedicated media server) in about a week. On top of the fun coming out of the CEDIA show. My wife and I are already making arrangements for spring EHX in Orlando. What did I do to desreve all this?

I know I am pretty slow when it comes to AV gear but after looking at the Xperinet web page I am still not clear on exactly what it is? Is it a media server for ripping all your DVDs to disk (I think we determined pretty conclusively in some other threads that this is sub-optimal compared to using a DVD changer). Or is it a distribution platform for sending HD signals from changers and other AV gear to different rooms?

 

[AnthonyZ]

... and should have an Xperinet Polaris server in to replace the MCE (not exactly a POS but hardly compares to a dedicated media server) in about a week. On top of the fun coming out of the CEDIA show. My wife and I are already making arrangements for spring EHX in Orlando. What did I do to desreve all this?

I know I am pretty slow when it comes to AV gear but after looking at the Xperinet web page I am still not clear on exactly what it is? Is it a media server for ripping all your DVDs to disk (I think we determined pretty conclusively in some other threads that this is sub-optimal compared to using a DVD changer). Or is it a distribution platform for sending HD signals from changers and other AV gear to different rooms?

First, Xperinet is a media content server that allows for independent playback in not only multiple zones but multiple locations (ieroperties). It will store "content" (wink, wink), playback stand alone discs (DVD, BluRay), downloaded content, music, etc. A la K'scape...

I'll do a search on the threads you speak of because I am super suprised that anyone who's used both means (dedicated server vs. changer/manager) would ever prefer a changer "solution". They don't even compare in my book.

 

[upstatemike]

I'll do a search on the threads you speak of because I am super suprised that anyone who's used both means (dedicated server vs. changer/manager) would ever prefer a changer "solution". They don't even compare in my book.

I think the consnsus was that hard drives are perfect for audio because audio files are small, people listen to the same music many times over, and ripping music is very fast. Video however requires tons of expensive drive space and hardware, is ridiculously time consuming to set up, and and has minimal value since most people will only want to see a particular movie once or twice and then it just takes up drive space after that. A changer is cheaper to buy, faster to set up, and more economical for storing movies than filling up terebytes of disk space.